Further&More | the job share specialists

Mapping your skills and goals (the crucial first step)

On Saturday, I spoke to a group of smart and engaged Wildfire Women about mapping their skills and goals. And I wanted to share our approach with you too.

We often work on this with our candidates. It's amazing how many brilliant people - often women - are terrible at saying in plain speak, shoulders back, what they're good at. We - many of us - constantly underplay our skills and strengths: we fudge and obfuscate, dodging compliments and feedback.

Skills

We start by working through our candidates' own appraisal of their strengths, using the framework below. It's always an interesting list, but always shorter than it should be. So we address that by crowd-sourcing their skills from the people in their network who know them best.

Goals

Then we look at their goals. We look at long-term goals unfettered by the constraints of real life (mortgages and kids and bills and so on) and born of passion and vision. And we look at the steps they need to take to get there.

And then...

We compare the two. Do our candidates have the skills they need to achieve their goals? Often they do. And if they don't, well then they have a clear todo list - a set of steps to achieve the goals they most want to achieve. A blueprint, if you will. They leave feeling empowered and in control and with real purpose.

If you'd like to give it a go - job-sharer or not - then drop us a line: share@furtherandmore.com